The hard fact is that most of the time road rage is aimed at the people who make themselves targets.  Consider: When some other driver irritates you, is he attentively cooperating in promoting smooth, predictable, safe, efficient graceful flow?  No.  He is being erratic, clumsy, arrogant, or uncooperative.  He is scaring you, threatening you.

Don’t be that guy.  Just as in any other human activity, don’t make yourself a target.  Don’t irritate people.  Stay out of the way.

Many years ago I overheard a restaurant customer telling one of the owners that she was thinking about getting a drivers license again.  The owner, non-licensed and fearful of driving, asked whether the diner wasn’t afraid to get back behind the wheel.  The customer said that no, she was not worried at all, because she knew what she was doing.  It was the “other guy” she worried about.

That statement bothered me.  I pondered it long and hard, until I realized that it likely expressed perfectly the concept of driving held by those folks who are always getting in the way because of their intense and innocent concentration on only their own tiny section of the driving scene – their needs.

Almost 50 years ago, as a project for a driver education certification course, I asked some authorities in the field what they considered the most important thing a driver can do.  Stirling Moss (Yes, really!  Stirling Moss!) responded, “Pay attention.”

Just watch.  With sustained effort, sooner or later, you’ll begin to notice things you hadn’t before.  Commentary Driving can be very helpful here.  Just do a running commentary, out loud, of everything you see that is relevant to your driving, with the goal of eventually being  able to keep talking without a pause from start to finish.  That will force you to look for stuff to talk about, and before too long you’ll discover that nearly everything you can see really is relevant.  New understandings will form and flow.  You’ll start to see how everything fits together – or should and could.  You’ll find yourself driving better than you ever even thought was possible.

Surprisingly, your new driving style will seem effortless, and it will be rewarding.  It will be fun to be so much more involved.  Best of all, it will mean that everybody on the road wins!

Paying attention is not just for road rage victims; it’s for the ragers too.  Road rage is justified when somebody purposely takes unfair advantage of us, but all the rest of the time, we must ask:  Do I pay attention?  Do I really understand the situation?  Am I as good a driver as I think I am?  Honestly.

Eliminate road rage.  Pay attention, and make the world a better place by how you drive through it!